Bluetooth is an evolving industry standard for personal area network (PAN) wireless communication. More specifically, Bluetooth® is a short range wireless technology that replaces wiring such as parallel printer cords and USB cables between devices.
Bluetooth exchanges data over short distances using short wavelength radio waves (e.g., 2.4 to 2.485 GHz) from fixed and mobile devices. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has recently proposed two mechanisms for direction finding in the Bluetooth 5.0 standard, one using angle of arrival (AoA) and the other using angle of departure (AoD).
In particular, Bluetooth 5.0 includes a new packet format with a 160 bit supplemental extension to enable a Bluetooth 5.0 device tracker to locate another Bluetooth 5.0 device asset. The new packet format uses new Bluetooth 5.0 hardware at both the transmitter and receiver devices. Consequently, problems may arise when devices based on the Bluetooth 5.0 standard attempt to locate legacy Bluetooth devices that use earlier Bluetooth standards, which lack Bluetooth 5.0 hardware, such as Bluetooth 4.0. In addition, aspects of the new Bluetooth 5.0 hardware infrastructure (e.g., multiple antennas) can be expensive.